Though a wobble plate engine has been known for about 70 years, it has not been widely accepted as an internal combustion engine. The use of the wobble plate engine has been limited to a hydraulic pump or devices driven by other engine. Various attempts have been made to improve or modify the design of the wobble plate engine in order to use the wobble plate engine as an internal combustion engine.
A conventional wobble plate engine 10, which is disclosed in an International Publication No. WO 97/19254, will now be explained with reference to FIG. 1.
The conventional wobble plate engine shown in FIG. 1 includes a wobble hub 29 formed as a part of a drive shaft 30. A wobble plate 31 is rotatably mounted on the wobble hub 29 by bearings 32. Conrods 33 connect a plurality of pistons 34 to the wobble plate 31. Each piston 34 reciprocates within one of a plurality of cylinders 36 formed in a pair of cylinder blocks 37. And both ends of the drive shaft 30 are supported in the cylinder block 37 by thrust bearings 38.
However, since the conventional wobble plate engine configured as described above has a both sides support structure in which the two pairing cylinder blocks 37 are placed opposite to each other with the wobble plate 31 intervened therebetween and both ends of the drive shaft 30 are supported at the two opposite cylinder blocks 37 via the trusting bearings 38, the structure is very complicated. In addition, it is very difficult to miniaturize the conventional wobble plate engine because of a large volume thereof.